Too late, a little voice whispered.
“What are you thinking?” Morrison asked.
“I think something smells off.” Lifting the borrowed phone, he dialed Benton’s number. The hacker genius picked up on the first ring. “Who’s this?”
“Surry,” he said. “Are you too busy with things on your end to do a little online digging for me?”
“No.” Steven could hear Benton slurping something noisily through a straw. “I just built a firewall so high it will take this wankstick hours to climb it. Tell me what you need.”
“I need you to find out anything and everything you can about a man named Rusty Parker.” He gave Benton the information he had on the bloke. That he was American, that he owned a cod boat anchored in Dover. “See if you can find a connection between him and Chelsea Duvall.”
“Done.”
The click of the line told him Benton had signed off.
Steven was still trying to figure out what was niggling at the edges of his instincts when Morrison interrupted his thoughts. “And while Benton works his magic, what shall you and I do?”
“Keep on ’til Dover.”
“I feel a bit Bondish, even if I do say so myself.” When Morrison smiled, all teeth and with a sick twinkle in his eye, Steven fought the urge to recoil.
Chapter 21
Folkestone, England
Rusty Parker’s home wasn’t what Emily would have expected from an outdoorsman.
It was three stories of blue-painted exterior, with an interior that managed to be both chic and warm. Neutral walls were covered in eclectic artwork—most having some sort of nautical theme. Big, comfy furniture was home to the occasional throw pillow. And the old oak floors were so heavily lacquered that she would swear she could see her reflection in the places not covered by brightly hued rugs.
She had chosen the top-floor bathroom to shower off the salt and foam from the Channel—neither smell had proved very pleasant when her body heat had begun to enhance them on the walk from the pier to Rusty’s house. As she toweled her hair dry and made her way to the bottom floor to join her freshly bathed coworkers in the living room, she realized she was out of ideas on how to get them off this giant, pain-in-the-ass rock known as Great Britain.
Rusty had been her ace in the hole.
“So what’s the plan now?” she asked before she’d stepped off the bottom tread.
Strategizing, preparing, taking action…those were her fortes. Sitting around twiddling her thumbs and scratching her ass had always made her feel twitchy. In fact, she was pretty sure that had there been such a diagnosis when she was a kid—or if her parents hadn’t been so busy looking for love in all the wrong places—it might have been determined that she had a touch of ADHD.
Ace was on the phone and lifted a finger for silence. Never something Emily had been very good at, but she obligingly bit her tongue. Then, after a few seconds during which he said a lot of “okays” and “roger that’s,” he finally thumbed off his phone and sighed.
She didn’t like the sigh. Sighs like that usually meant bad news. Paulie Konerko had heaved one very similar sigh when he told the press back in 2014 that he planned to retire from White Sox baseball—a loss she continued to mourn. Her mother had sighed like that when she told Emily she was divorcing her third husband, a man Emily had loved and adored. Richard, her FAS, had heaved a sigh that sounded a lot like Ace’s when he had called her a heartless bitch and told her that he couldn’t work with her another day.
When she thought about it, the list of times she’d heard sighs like that seemed endless.
“Ozzie’s having trouble accessing Morrison’s data,” Ace said. “Something to do with another hacker throwing obstacles in his way.”
“Ruddy inconvenient,” Christian grumbled.
Ace shrugged. His wet blond hair looked almost brown in the low lights of the lamps parked on the big oak end tables. The gray day’s mood had turned from mildly unhappy to full-on sulky. Rain was imminent.
March in England. Gotta love it.
“He says he’ll beat the fuckhead—his word for the guy, not mine—but it could take some time,” Ace explained. “In the meantime, Angel has changed his destination. Instead of Calais, he’s on his way to Le Touquet. Apparently he knows a guy who has a submersible we might be able to use.”
Emily blinked, her mind stopping on the wordsubmersible. “Is that covert operator speak for a flippin’submarine?”
“A small one.” Ace nodded.
As ifsizemade a difference…er…at least inthisparticular case? Big or small, a submarine was a submarine. Emily tried to comprehend how, from this morning until now, they had managed to veer off the road and careen crazily toward that little place she liked to call O’Shitsburgh.
